By agrimag
Small farms in the US thrive with little income, but today, letting guests stay and experience farm life give them additional source of money.
It was Seren Sinisi’s dream to host guests to their livestock farm, and together with her husband, Steve, they now open their Old Crow Ranch in Maine, to visitors who want to have a taste of farm life.
With the very little support they get from the government, small farms turn to agritourism, which is apparently becoming a booming industry, based from Airbnb bookings. This accommodation hosting application recorded around 944,000 farm guest reservations from February 2018-2019.
Actually, this concept wasn’t really new at all; in fact, farms have been doing it since the 20th century. This is also the reason why farms in Italy have been increasing since 1960s. Some also use farms as learning venues for guests just like what the nonprofit organization, Fox Haven Organic Farm and Learning Center in Maryland, has been doing.
However, renting out a farm entails a lot of effort on the part of the host. Even though the renting scheme benefits farmers, it also becomes hard for them at times to accommodate guests, since they need to attend to their farm chores at the same time; if only to remind guests that they are staying on a farm and not on a hotel, which means that the hosts still need to perform tasks and duties on a daily basis such as handling machinery and harvesting fresh produce to ensure that their guests could have a ready food on their plates.
Farms are especially famous among families because most of the parents want to expose their children on the real farm life – that is, for them to see where their food is coming from and to engage them with farm activities like feeding the animals.
Wouldn’t you want to experience a different and better kind of holiday such as ‘farmcation’? Shying away from the city life’s hustle and bustle for a day or two wouldn’t be bad after all.
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